Intangible Glamour

In her collection of essays The Amateur: An Independent Life of Letters (1999), the Threepenny Review's founder, Wendy Lesser, has insisted in a fit of modesty that magazine and book editing suffer from "a behind-the-scenes lack of tangible glamour." The author has it exactly backward: for anyone tempted to pick up a book subtitled An Independent Life in Letters, the behind-the-scenes nature of editing is the very source of its glamour. A colleague used to regale her fellow graduate students with anecdotes collected over years spent working at a publishing house in New York City. Kurt Vonnegut, for example, once telephoned her to inquire—politely, good-naturedly—when he might expect a royalty check. Who among us can resist the appeal of such material, admittedly slight?

Barbara Baker has a clearer understanding than Lesser of the allure of behind-the-scenes anecdotes—in her case, regarding a life in the theater. For Backstage Stories she interviewed twenty-one professionals, mostly in the theater, holding low-profile jobs: first, to elicit a simple explanation of what exactly, say, a body-control instructor does (she teaches Pilates); and, second, to offer her subjects a chance to make their remote world more accessible.

And, yes, some sections of Baker's book do offer the slight pleasures of celebrity gossip—particularly her interview with the stage manager Trish Montemuro of the Royal National Theatre in London, who informs Baker that Helen Mirren, during the rehearsal process, "plays things very close to her chest, in that she doesn't keep trying out things in a flamboyant way." Poor Judi Dench, recalls Montemuro, "sometimes finds it difficult to learn lines, and she finds that frustrating," whereas Maggie Smith works like a sponge: "She just soaked things up." John Wood, alas, was "'high maintenance,' in the sense that he really required you to be there for him."

The same might not be said of playwrights, though each period of rehearsal is different. Tom Stoppard struck Montemuro as reserved yet accessible. "On the other hand, Harold Pinter was very scary." The American dialect coach Deborah Hecht employed a passive-aggressive strategy on another formidable celebrity, Vanessa Redgrave, with whom Hecht worked on a Broadway production of Long Day's Journey into Night. "Vanessa is a very strong-willed person," Hecht reports. "She came to the rehearsal wanting to do an Irish accent throughout. I knew that if I said no it was not a good idea … she would hang on to it, and not give it up. So I just agreed with her, and then surreptitiously started moving her in another direction."

That ability to manipulate colleagues seems to be a highly valued job skill of every theater professional—as when, for example, the footwear coordinator Sara Wan is called upon to convince a fussy actor to appear on stage wearing a hideous but period-accurate pair of shoes. One must be able to communicate clearly yet cajole gently so as not to alienate other members of the theater family. "One of the reasons why I like working in the theater is that you are always working as a team," states Ewan Hunter, a prop-maker and welder. "There is always a bigger picture, compared to being a fine artist, where you are expected to work on your own." That team effort requires patience and tact. "In the theater, everyone drives towards an opening night," the American choreographer and director Susan Stroman explains in an odd metaphor, "and everyone is in the same swimming pool together: you all drown together, or get an Olympic medal together."

Not every member of the backstage team is well versed in the work of his or her colleagues, which only heightens the need for good communication. Montemuro may have an easy time explaining her job—"Normally, a stage manager does what the name implies, and manages the stage"—but she is an exception. Paule Constable complains, "I think it is not only people outside the industry, but also a lot of people within it, [who] don't...